by Tim Gunn
What happened to using words instead of actions as the means of moving past people who are obstacles in your path? I find that merely saying, “Excuse me, please …” is a successful method. I have never needed to push, shove, or body block my way through a crowd, so you needn’t, either. And remember that backpacks, wheeled luggage, and baby strollers were not invented to be used as battering rams. I like getting around the city fast, but I often feel kind of beaten up by the time I reach my destination.
Another place where it seems like niceties have been completely abandoned is on airplanes. I have to fly all the time for work. As we know, flying used to be a very glamorous thing and is now only a hair less miserable than a cross-country trip on an un-air-conditioned bus in August.
Still, quite frankly, I look forward to that airline door closing. There is no phone. There is no Internet (although airborne Internet access is surely in our future). I am insulated. I can actually just focus and write on my computer or read a book. It’s heaven. But I can’t sleep on planes, which is why taking overnight flights makes me crazy. I am always wide awake. I am the perfect person for the exit row. If the pilot ever needs me, I am right there, ready to go.
Maybe that’s why strange things are always happening to me on planes. One time, I had my seat in coach and was just about to start reading when a woman came down the aisle with an eight- or nine-year-old child and sat next to me in the middle seat, with this large child on her lap. She thought children could travel for free, and no one had stopped her.
Seats today are close quarters to begin with, but this was ridiculous. No one in the aisle could move. Eventually, the flight attendant came and sorted things out and explained that children over two need their own seats, but until then I thought I was going to be pinned down by a large preteen for the whole flight.
Once when I flew from Paris to New York, we made an emergency landing in Boston because a famous nightclub owner and her teenage son refused to stop smoking. Something similar happened once when I was flying from New York to Detroit early on a Sunday morning. There was a bad-tuxedo group—the men wearing these hideous purple and pale blue tuxedos and the women clad in acetate gowns—throwing lit cigarettes at one another. The pilot ended up leaving the cockpit to come yell at them. When we landed, the sheriff got on board and took them away.
Another time when I boarded, an older man was sitting in my seat. I asked him about his seat, and he didn’t seem to understand me. I said, “If you’re in my seat, where’s your seat? Because I’ll sit in it.”
When that failed, I approached the flight attendant and explained the situation. She said, “Well, just take a seat.”
“Aren’t these seats assigned?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “but if someone comes and you’re in his seat, you can just move.”
“But this man in my seat must have an assignment of his own.” I said again. “Can’t you just help me figure out what it is, and then I’ll sit there? It will make it so much easier for everyone.”
She was completely and totally uninterested in helping facilitate. I realized I was being really annoying, but I stood in the vestibule by the entrance to the plane until there was only one seat left, and then I sat there.
So it’s not just the fellow passengers who can make a flight difficult, sometimes it’s the flight attendants. They say they’re there for your safety and to do anything they can to make you more comfortable, but sometimes their stress levels get the better of them and they become more like jail wardens than attendants.
On a flight to Tampa for a speaking assignment, I sensed there was going to be trouble when I saw a very young flight attendant who seemed furious. Can’t you just tell when someone has an aura of hostility? The second you see them you know they’re going to be troublesome. Sure enough, a woman came on the plane with a huge, unwieldy roller bag, and she told this angry flight attendant, “Excuse me, but I’m going to need help putting this in the overhead.”
The response: “Then you had no business bringing it on board.”
Debatable.
“But I do have it on board,” the woman said, “and I do need help.”
And the flight attendant said, “Well, you’re not getting any help from me. That’s not what we’re here for. When you get to your seat, you’ll have to ask someone.”
“And if they won’t help me?”
“We’ll have to check it.”
She had a curtness and a dismissiveness that I found very unpleasant.
And she later did something even worse. During the safety demonstration, she was pantomiming along to the safety instructional. I was reading a book. Others were engaged in their own work. Suddenly, she stopped what she was doing, paused the recording, and, with her two-inch-heeled foot, kicked the newspaper of the person in the first row! She shouted, “I’m not doing this demonstration to entertain myself!”
Frankly, I worried about her blood pressure.
Carrying around anger like that is really dangerous, but I think it’s up to each of us to deal with it on our own time. I hate confrontation and am so turned off by people who insist on starting fights all the time. Some people are so insecure that they will push a confrontation at every opportunity. There are even people who at a party (often after a few glasses of something) will blurt out things to others like, “I feel like you don’t like me.”
It’s so childish, and it never ends well. Either they say that, actually, they don’t like you, and then there’s awkwardness. Or they say they do like you, but you’ve just put them in an uncomfortable position, so you’ll never know if you just coerced that answer—or if at that moment, because of the question, they actually stopped liking you.
Remember at the playground when kids would ask each other a million times, “Are you my best friend?”
After the tenth time you want to say, “Well, not anymore!”
I still remember the grade-school drama involving my oldest friend, Doug Harbison, and my new friend, Craig Smith. I felt confident enough about Doug’s friendship that I could assure Craig that he was my best friend because I thought nothing would alienate Doug. I was wrong. It really hurt Doug’s feelings, and I felt terrible.
Bad manners often come from a place of deep unhappiness. It’s almost a declaration of bad citizenship, a way of challenging the world: “Why should I be a good citizen? You haven’t been good to me!”
Frankly, in my experience, people who try to put you on the spot about your feelings are just angry with you, and they’re projecting negative feelings onto you. They want to start a fight so they have an excuse to be so upset. Often the anger is based on your aloofness. They’re thinking, Where does he get off not liking me? I’m very likable!
You know, this book started out as an etiquette book, but at times I’ve thought, Maybe it’s too tough to behave well under all the crazy circumstances modern life throws at you.
Do you know how Amy Vanderbilt, the etiquette maven, died? In 1974, she fell or jumped out of the second-story window of her East Eighty-seventh Street town house. It was mysterious. I wonder sometimes if the number of things that could go wrong between people just overwhelmed her and she lost all interest in avoiding pitfalls like open windows.
In fact, when you start thinking about how cruel people can be to one another, you wonder whether you should become an advocate not for manners but for living in a cave with a boulder rolled in front of it. Life is full of many shocking surprises and upsetting interactions. Maybe we should all opt out.
Especially because becoming a hermit brings up some great design opportunities. We can bring back the fifties bomb shelter.
My mother was very into that idea back in the day. She was looking at plans right and left and stocking up for it. I think I was in my twenties when she finally got rid of all the boxes with the gallon plastic containers of distilled water and the by-then-exploded canned food.
I didn’t care about preparing for the apocalypse, but I did love the archite
cture. The shelter was basically a submarine with a big periscope. The thought of a nuclear war terrified me, and I didn’t enjoy the nuclear drills we had to do at my school. I used to think, I don’t think hiding under our desks is a useful exercise. Will it really protect us if bombs fall and the whole building caves in? I was a critic even then.
Ultimately, though, I think leaving your subbasement is well worth the trouble. And what else can we do? We’re human beings. Try as we might to avoid it, and as hard as it might sometimes be to act civil, the truth is this: We need one another.
Physical Comfort Is Overrated
WHENEVER I MEET NEW people, almost without fail they say, “I was so afraid of what you’d say about my clothes!” The truth is: I really don’t take note of what other people wear unless their outfit blows my mind for good or for ill, and even in that case I will rarely say anything unless I’m asked.
When I was taping Extra! the other day, the camera guy said, “Oh God, I just know you’re going to be disappointed in what I’m wearing.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You’re hoisting a camera and down on your knees and moving around. You need to be agile. It wouldn’t be right for you to be in a tailored suit! You’re dressed appropriately!”
I get a little shrill when I talk about it, because it seems like people are either too worried about what they have on or not worried enough. People are really intimidated by fashion, and as an educator and a fashion lover I think that’s such a shame.
Meryl Streep said in a 2009 Vanity Fair article that she was over trying to appeal to men. “I can’t remember the last time I really worried about being appealing,” she said.
I don’t totally believe that she doesn’t care. It is true that she’s really eschewed fashion. I think it’s smart, intellectual Meryl speaking, saying she’s too smart for style. But no one’s too smart for it. Providing we leave our cave, it matters to all of us.
When we look good, we feel better. That’s true for everyone. You feel better able to tackle the world. It’s not a good feeling going into an exam without having prepared, and it’s not a good feeling leaving the house without having dressed to be around people. Just the way it never rains when you have an umbrella, you’ll never run into people if you look fantastic. But go outside in pajamas, and you’ll run into every ex you have.
The key is not being dressy. The key is being appropriate.
Someone at my neighborhood grocery store once said to me, “Wow, you really do wear jeans and a T-shirt!”
“Yes,” I said, “at the grocery store.”
It’s all about context. I wear a suit to work, to weddings, to funerals, to the theater, and to church. When shopping at the grocery store or running errands, I have been known to wear jeans, because it’s totally appropriate. The jeans fit me and are clean, and I usually pair them with a jacket, but yes, jeans!
Some people think of dressing up or being polite as a burden. They think having to wear a tie or use the right fork or send a thank-you card is a kind of shackle. To these people I say: Getting out of bed is a shackle. If you feel that way, stay in it! Invest in a hospital gurney and wheel yourself around on it when you need to go out.
I get very impatient with this whole “comfort issue” with clothing. Yes, you don’t feel as comfortable in clothes that fit you as you do in your pajamas and robe. That’s a good thing. You’re navigating a world where you need to have your wits about you. If you’re in a lackadaisical comfort haze, you can’t be engaged in the world the way you need to be.
Would I be more comfortable in a business meeting wearing my pajamas?
No! It would feel, honestly, very weird. I would think, Where’s my IV? When do I take my next meds?
Wanting to look good in public has to do with the respect that I have for myself and the respect that I have for the people around me. One of the things I love about New York City is how much people dress up for one another. Walking down the street is such a pleasure, because people are really turned out. Yes, it probably took them more than five minutes to get ready, but it was so worth it. They make the city a prettier place.
In her wonderful memoir D.V., Diana Vreeland (who was born exactly fifty years to the day before me—lucky me!) talks about how she prepared nightly for the arrival of her husband. She dressed up for him every single night:
Isn’t it curious that even after more than forty years of marriage, I was always slightly shy of him? I can remember his coming home in the evening—the way the door would close and the sound of his step … If I was in my bath or in my bedroom making up, I can remember always pulling myself up, thinking, “I must be at my very best.” There was never a time when I didn’t have that reaction—ever.
That’s kind of lovely, I think. It’s always better to err on the side of beauty over comfort. It might get tiresome in practice, but it’s a sweet idea. And it’s certainly better than being the dowdy, depressing, slatternly housewife played by Shirley Booth in Come Back, Little Sheba.
People who are lazy about grooming make me a little crazy. And I’m not talking about getting a blowout or putting on a ton of makeup or getting a haircut every week. I’m talking about bathing and other basics. What are you saying about yourself and about your feelings for the people around you if you give up on these simple things? You’re saying, “I don’t care.” And if you don’t care about yourself or the people around you, why should others care about you?
Grooming inappropriately can be as bad as not doing it at all. One time I was out to brunch, and a patron at the restaurant started clipping his nails. He was even with someone, who you’d think would have stopped him! It’s such a distinct noise. My gag reflex kicked in. When you see it on the subway, it’s bad enough, but at a restaurant? There was a lot of eye contact around the room, but the staff didn’t throw him out. He just finished, and then left the clippings there on the floor for the staff to clean up. That’s in my bad behavior hall of fame, and it’s a good example of someone being far too comfortable out in public.
I also question people’s definition of “comfort.” Sure, oversize T-shirts feel soft on your body, but you know what’s genuinely comfortable? Being dressed appropriately for your surroundings. It feels good at the end of the day to take off your fancy shoes and put on your slippers, but it also feels good to know that all day you looked good and smelled good and that the people you encountered had a positive impression of you and enjoyed having you around.
For my job with Liz Claiborne Inc., I host a ton of shopping mall events. I’ll be honest with you: I love them. My colleague Leah Salak and I do Liz Claiborne Inc. multibrand fashion shows for the shoppers at the mall. We pull clothes from the mall’s own stores so the customers can actually buy what they see. It’s fun and it’s also intended to be educational. We show people how they can mix and match, how they can take a dress from day to night, and how an item of apparel can be made ever more versatile.
We work with five to seven of our brands, which include Lucky Brand Jeans, Kate Spade, Juicy Couture, and DKNY Jeans. I always mix them up as much as possible. The business-side people always complain about mixing and matching on the runway. For them, taking a Kate Spade dress and putting a Juicy Couture coat over it is some kind of sacrilege. But I’m very blunt: People don’t wear one designer head to toe. So we show people how they actually will wear things, and ultimately, I think it benefits all the brands, because you see how versatile each item is.
Then we have a Q&A session after, and I always find it so touching how women will stand up in front of eight hundred to a thousand people, open up their jackets, and say, “Tim, look how thick I am through here. How can my clothing help me with this?”
It’s so wonderful how comfortable they are talking to me about these things. I love hearing about real people with real issues. We live in a bubble here in New York. Of course, I mostly like the bubble! But I also like to get out of it for a reality check, and the reality is that a lot of people are not comforta
ble with their bodies and need a little help making what they have work for them.
Maybe it will be helpful to hear that even in New York, the women who are supposed to be fashion idols aren’t happy with their bodies. When I’ve gone to the Vogue offices I’m always struck by how insanely thin everyone is, even the editorial assistants, who aren’t in front of a camera. I think: How many eating disorders are there on this floor?
One former editorial assistant I know says that even though she’s a healthy weight and height and usually wears a size 8 or 10, she felt morbidly obese while she was working there.
Isn’t that a sick statement on the industry?
There is a famous cafeteria in the Condé Nast Building, which houses Vogue, The New Yorker, Glamour, and a ton of other magazines. It’s a feat of architecture, and yet everything about it horrifies me. Everyone there is so thin, and no one is eating the gourmet food on her plate. There are skinny mirrors on your way out. You know, throwing up your food is not healthy, just as obesity isn’t healthy.
I’m always saying I have the greatest respect for whatever size a woman is. We can work with whatever we have. To larger women who want to feel good about their bodies, I’m always talking about the opera divas—those big, beautiful, proud women who are so sexy and powerful. It’s ridiculous that a woman with that kind of build wouldn’t celebrate it. I know I find curves attractive on women, and most of the men I know do, too.
Of course, I also want people to be healthy. The girth issue in America is not about the clothes. You can dress the opera divas, and they can look great. It’s about health. I know how hard it is to lose weight when you drive everywhere and fast food is so cheap. For what I pay for a deli wrap sandwich across the street, I could go to McDonald’s twice, and that makes a big difference if you don’t have a huge food budget. But you have to find a way to stay healthy no matter what your budget is, whether that means exercise or cooking fresh food.
